Posts Tagged 'IBM'

Since the founding of SoftLayer in May of 2005, our motto has been “Innovate or Die.” Over the past decade, our business has grown exponentially and evolved to meet the needs of our customers and seize opportunities in the marketplace. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Today, we’re excited to share the next big step in SoftLayer’s evolution as part of the IBM Cloud portfolio: IBM Bluemix is integrating SoftLayer products and services into its vast catalog of infrastructure, platform, and application services!

The SoftLayer products, services, tools, systems, and support you know and love will become a cornerstone of a unified Bluemix cloud experience that delivers the performance, flexibility, and consistency of SoftLayer infrastructure alongside the extensive catalog of cloud resources that include IBM Watson services, development runtimes, containers, database services, and more.

But enough of the fluff. What does this mean to you as a SoftLayer customer?

In the coming days, weeks, and months, you’ll start SoftLayer integrated more tightly into the Bluemix cloud platform, and with this integration, we’re bringing all of our cloud platform offerings under the Bluemix brand.

The most important thing to remember about this transition is that all of the SoftLayer systems, products, services, and support you know and love will remain in place as fundamental building blocks upon which the broader Bluemix catalog will be built.

Bluemix will be consistent with your SoftLayer experience:

For the next few months, all SoftLayer offerings will be available on both SoftLayer.com and IBM.com/Bluemix—which means you can order identical products and services on either site, and they’ll be deployed in the same data centers and managed in the same systems.

You still have access the your SoftLayer control portal to manage your cloud infrastructure environment.

The support teams for all platforms will remain exactly the same.

While our team places a high priority on preserving the SoftLayer customer experience, the opportunities available as a result of this integration into Bluemix are what we’re most excited about:

The SoftLayer control portal has been integrated into the Bluemix console to allow for a single dashboard to manage infrastructure and cloud services.

By linking your SoftLayer account to a Bluemix account, you’ll receive one invoice for all of your infrastructure and services.

The full catalog of Bluemix products and services is available for you to integrate into your own apps and systems, letting you do what you do better and more efficiently.

Well, you can keep doing what you’ve always done—we were intentional about making that possible. But if you want to take a more proactive approach to learning about what the future of SoftLayer looks like in Bluemix, we recommend heading over to the Bluemix homepage so you can see how our infrastructure offerings—like bare metal servers, virtual servers, cloud storage, security, and network products—are integrated into Bluemix.

And while you’re there, you can learn about some of the cool things you can do with Bluemix, like:

Optimize campaigns in real-time based on customer reactions using Watson Personality Insights.

When IBM acquired SoftLayer, I felt proud. I thought, “Now we can make a difference.” Why did I feel that way, and why didn’t I think we could make a difference where we were? What brought out these feelings about IBM?

As I expand my knowledge of programming, I often come across books that don’t really pertain strictly to software development—but they pique my interest. The most recent of those is Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek, suggested in a recent talk by Mary Poppendiek about leading development. Start with Why is a book about product development, leadership, and life in general. It explains why we feel the way we do about certain companies and how we should move forward to generate that feeling about ourselves and the companies we believe in.

Who cares why?

In Start with Why, Sinek talks about several different big companies, including Apple, Harley-Davidson, and Walmart. He writes that one thing that is very important when developing a product or even working in a company is to understand that company’s “why.” What makes the company tick? He says Apple has a clear message about this: “to start a revolution.” He claims Apple is clear as to why they do what they do and it has formed a culture of people around it that cares more about that message than any one product they sell. The products, in turn, embody that message, as do Apple employees. This is why, when Apple decided to move into the phone, tablet, and music industry, rather than focus only computers and hardware, their customers moved with them. Although the differences between an Apple iPad and a Dell tablet might be small, Apple consumers like feeling that they are part of the Apple society, so they choose what they know and love, based on their gut instinct.

Think now about Harley-Davidson. Many of its customers have tattoos with the Harley-Davidson logo, because those customers identify with the lifestyle that Harley-Davison projects—a statement more about the person than the company. It says, “I am a Harley-Davison type of person.” Mitsubishi or Kawasaki could have similar bikes—of even better quality and cheaper prices—but that customer is choosing Harley-Davidson. They have made a lifetime commitment to a brand because they identify with the iconography and want to be a part of the society that is Harley-Davidson.

What is IBM’s “why”?

I applied the idea of “why” to my work and my company, bringing up the question, “What is IBM’s ‘why’?” In pursuit of this question, I searched “Why IBM?” on the IBM intranet. Luckily, there was a document meant for sales reps to help define IBM for new customers with the following on the first slide:

“IBM is a global information technology services company operating in over 170 countries. We bring innovative solutions to a diverse client base to help solve some of their toughest business challenges. In addition to being the world’s largest information technology and consulting services company, IBM is a global business and technology leader, innovating in research and development to shape the future of society at large.”

I dissected this blurb, pulling out the parts which describe IBM. I ended up with this:

IBM is large (the world’s largest)

IBM is global (diverse, international, in more than 170 countries)

IBM is business-oriented (solves business challenges)

IBM is a technology leader (innovative, focus on research and development)

IBM is shaping the future of society at large

Then I put it together into a single sentence:

“IBM is a large, global, business-oriented technology leader, shaping the future of society at large.”

That is when I realized that I was too focused on IBM’s “what,” so I removed everything that focused too heavily on the subject of the sentence (IBM) and focused my attention instead on the predicate. This left me with a single, easy sentence answering the questions: “Why is IBM?”, “What is its function?”, and “What are we trying to do?”.

“IBM is shaping the future of society at large.”

This is why IBMers get up in the morning. This is why we work hard. This is what we are hoping to accomplish in our own lives.

Simon Sinek states, “The 'why' comes from looking back.” Every person or company’s achievement should prove the “why”—so how do we prove IBM’s “why”? Let’s take a look at some of our victories in the past and present and compare.

In 1937, IBM’s tabulating equipment helped maintain employment records for 26 million people in support of the Social Security Act. In 1973-1974, IBM developed the Universal Product Code and released systems to support bar code scanning and automatic inventory maintenance. In a recent employee webcast, IBM’s senior vice president of Global Technology Services Martin Jetter communicated the idea, “We are the backbone of he world’s economy.” His supporting comments included our footprint in the airline industry, stating, “We manage the systems that support 25 percent of the total paid-passenger miles flown globally.” He also said, “Our services support 60 percent of daily card transactions in banking, 53 percent of mobile connections worldwide in telecom, and 61 percent of passenger vehicles produced in the auto industry.”

Lately, IBM brought attention to its revolutionary AI, better known as Watson, and is ushering in the idea of cognitive business analytics. In my opinion, these things prove that we are invested in shaping the future of a global society.

What does this mean about IBM? What does this mean about me?

I can’t speak for IBM as a whole, but I can talk about myself. I want to be a part of something bigger than myself; I want to contribute in a meaningful way, and understand what that contribution meant. I believe in a global society; we are all in this world together and I feel like there are more important issues that we can deal with other than our differences. I want to lead, or be a part of a team that leads; I strive to be successful. I am not OK with the status quo; I believe there is a better way. I have hope for the future. I don’t want to start a revolution. I want to be a part of something more pervasive, an underlying foundation that helps society thrive—not just changing society for the sake of change. I want to help lay a foundation that allows it to thrive and grow into something better. I believe that IBM identifies these goals, and projects this same message—a message that resonates with me at a very basic level. It sums up why I am proud to be an IBMer.

What about you?

“I am an IBMer” is not a sentiment that only employees need. In fact, it should go well beyond being employed at IBM. Our customers should feel the sentiment as well. Even people completely unaffiliated with IBM should be able to say, “I am an IBMer,” meaning that they believe in the same dream—the dream of a global society, working together to meet global goals; a dream about the future of society at-large.

IBM InterConnect is almost here! To help you get the most out of your time at the conference (and so you’ll spend less time looking at your phone or conference guide), we’re giving you all the need-to-know info so you can keep up with us in Vegas.

The Top 10 SoftLayer Sessions at InterConnect

With so many sessions at InterConnect, it is easy to miss the best ones. To hone in on your session selections, we’ve made a list of our top 10 SoftLayer sessions (in our humble opinion). With more than 60 SoftLayer-related sessions to choose from, this will point you in the right direction. You won’t want to miss any of these:

When you’re in Mandalay Bay, drop in to the Solution Expo (South Convention Center, Level 1, Bayside C&D) and head over to the IBM Cloud Zone. That’s where you’ll find the Bluemix and SoftLayer hub. We’ll be doing live demos, showing you the power of our infrastructure in action. You’ll also find the beloved Server Challenge there—with a twist.

Want more details on the Solution Expo? Download the IBM Events App for Android or Apple for even more conference details.

Party time at IBM InterConnect

All work and no play make IBMers a dull bunch. After busy days at the conference, we’ll kick back, relax, and enjoy a performance from The Rocket Man himself, Sir Elton John! On Wednesday, February 24, IBM InterConnect and Rocket are sponsoring a performance just for IBM InterConnect attendees.

Prefer to shake it? Dust off those dancin’ shoes on Wednesday, February 24 and party like only IBM can at Hakkasan. From 8:00–10:00 pm, a bash featuring five levels of dance floors, DJs, food, private VIP spots, and your fellow InterConnect attendees caps off the night. Your badge is your ticket to the party.

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

What does Marc Jones have to say about SoftLayer?

Our CTO Marc Jones sat down for an interview with Angel Diaz, IBM VP Cloud Technology & Architecture, host of IBM Cloud Dragon Dojo Series. Marc discusses his start at SoftLayer, the benefits of the SoftLayer cloud platform, dark fiber matter, and the importance of global reach. Instead of telling you what he said, you can watch it.

IBM’s acquisition of the Weather Company is now complete, and that means a few changes are afoot. First, all of the Weather Company’s workloads are now running in IBM Cloud data centers. And second, David Kenny, who was the Weather Company CEO, is now in charge of Watson business.

In his new role, Kenny says his primary objective is to make Watson an even more robust platform and a leader in cognitive computing. In TechCrunch, he noted that the weather platform is not just about weather data. The massive amount of data that The Weather Channel takes in is used across various industries to help both companies and consumers make well-educated choices. All of this data will also be a boon to Watson as IBM continues to grow the AI platform with the Weather Company’s data sets.

“Obviously we ingest more weather data than others and process it in the cloud for pilots, insurers or farmers or ordinary citizens to make better informed decisions. But that platform can be reused for other unstructured data sets… this will be helpful for IBM in other business areas. What we have figured out at the Weather Company, and IBM will continue to explore across more IoT applications, is how to take data from lots of places and turn that into decisions to help make things work,” Kenny said.

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

UStream joins the IBM family.
IBM has announced an exciting new addition to the family. We would like to welcome UStream to the team and a new cloud video services unit they will join. TechCrunch reported, “Braxton Jarratt, who came to IBM as part of the ClearLeap deal, has been chosen to run this new unit. He says UStream gives the company that missing streaming piece that allows them to form this unit with a full-service enterprise video offering.”

Jarrett also said that IBM “plans to incorporate other pieces like Watson for analytics, something that customers were asking for around video delivery at CES earlier this month. They want to know information like how long people are engaged and what kinds of actions they can take to stop churn.”

IBM Watson is the future of artificial intelligence.
The head of IBM Watson, Mike Rhodin sat down for an interview with Forbes to talk about the future of artificial intelligence.

Since Watson’s appearance on Jeopardy!, it started a time that Rhodin considers “in-market experimentation.” During that time they worked with major names in the healthcare industry that “wanted to start to experiment with the technology–not to play Jeopardy!, but to use the underlying technology to start to solve problems.”

Rhodin noted, “The second thing that was a key decision about the launch of the commercial project was the creation of an open ecosystem: we would open up the APIs on platforms so that startups could get access to the technology and start to build out businesses on top of it.” This led to the beginning of the Watson Group made up of a few customers and a little group of startups who utilized the technology. That is when the ecosystem project took off.

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

Ford and IBM team up to take the hassle out of driving.
Ford announced a partnership with IBM Cloud to start a new platform to analyze transportation data. In an article by TechCrunch, “The new platform will use IBM’s cloud computing platform to analyze small slices of data to look for patterns and trends that could help drivers make better decisions about their driving—or whether they should maybe use another means of transportation.”

Ford began testing the platform to run its Dynamic Shuttle model on the Ford campus. Ford explains, “Should one of the Transit vans experience a malfunction that triggers a warning light, the platform will be able to start routing requests away from that vehicle to other Transits in service—allowing another shuttle to redeploy to keep all riders on schedule.”

Bluemix Social Sentiment App set to better fan experience at Australian Open.
The entire Australian Open 2016 experience will be hosted by IBM’s Continuous Available Services. In a blog post from IBM Bluemix Dev, “The component that provides a social endpoint, Social Sentiment Application, for fan experiences is hosted on a Bluemix hybrid cloud that follows several design principles: Cognitive Design, Microservices, High Availability, Parallel Functions and Disaster Avoidance.”

One highlight of the cognitive design is that it will allow for an engaging user experience, further developing the interactivity between people and machines. The post notes, “The system enables humans and machines to understand the crowd and their opinions focused around tennis players. Over time, the trend of tennis player sentiment is displayed through IBM’s SlamTracker, which learns player popularity movement. Humans interact with the Social Sentiment Application through Twitter, which has a direct impact on social sentiment.

IBM named a hybrid cloud leader by Forrester and Synergy.
Reports from both Forrester and Synergy Research highlighted IBM’s continued cloud growth in the hybrid arena. “These new reports further underscore the momentum IBM has gained among its customers that are increasingly turning to IBM for help connecting cloud services and applications to core systems that may always remain on-premises, due to such factors as regulatory compliance, control and cost.”

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

AT&T’s data comes to IBM.
IBM and AT&T announced an expansion of their current partnership. According to the press release, “AT&T will transition its managed application and managed hosting services unit to IBM. IBM will then align these managed service capabilities with the IBM Cloud portfolio.” Philip Guido, IBM General Manager of Global Technology Services for North America, said, "Working with AT&T, we will deliver a robust set of IBM Cloud and managed services that can continuously evolve to meet clients' business objectives."

When the deal closes, managed applications and managed hosting services AT&T offers will be delivered by IBM. “AT&T will continue to provide networking services including security, cloud networking, and mobility that it provides today. And the two companies will work closely to innovate and deliver a full suite of integrated solutions to customers.”

Welcome to Munich, Watson IoT.
The Watson IoT business unit is getting a new home. Last week, IBM announced the “launch of a new global headquarters” in Munich. The new home base “will be the centerpiece of a group of eight global regional customer centers that suggest IBM plans to win major IoT business by deemphasizing its American roots.” Building trust with European companies is a vital part of this new office. Frank Gillett, a Forrester analyst said, “A traditional mainline tech company has plunked down in Europe to say, we are firmly with you, we are rooting ourselves in your environment to work with you.”

Gillett also said with IBM’s announcement “signaled the most strongly of any of the vendors when it comes to investment and organizational structure and headquarters. Now they have to execute and deliver.”

Watson is the rise of the thinking machine.
IBM Watson VP, Steve Gold, sat down with Forbes to talk about where Watson is headed in 2016.

With the announcement of several new partnerships, IBM plans to put Watson’s cognitive capabilities to use solving a wide array of issues worldwide. Gold said, “At the start of 2014 we had three partners, and today we have over 300.” The article notes, “Watson is already in operation across 26 industries, including financial services, travel and retail in 36 countries, and its uptake is continuing to accelerate.”

The partnerships with Twitter, Softbank, and Mubadala, just to name a few, will further develop Watson’s cognitive growth. That’s because “cognitive computers don’t need to be programmed—they can learn for themselves.”

So you’ve made the decision to utilize object storage at SoftLayer. Great! But are you and your applications fluent in object storage? Do you know how to transfer data to SoftLayer object storage as well as modify and delete objects? How about when to use APIs and when to use storage gateways? If not, you’re not alone.

We’ve found that most IT professionals understand the difference between “traditional” (i.e., file and block) storage and object storage. They have difficulty, however, navigating the methods to interact with SoftLayer’s object storage service that is based on OpenStack Swift. This is understandable because traditional storage systems expose volumes and or shares that can be mounted and consumed via iSCSI, NFS, or SMB protocols.

That’s not the case with object storage, including the object storage service offered by SoftLayer. Data is only accessed via the use of REST APIs and language bindings, third-party applications supporting SFTP, the SoftLayer customer portal, or via storage gateways.

The solutions are outlined below, including guidance on when to utilize each access method. Figure 1 provides a high level overview of the available options and their purpose.

Figure 1: Object storage data access methods

REST APIs and Language Bindings
The first and possibly most flexible method to access SoftLayer object storage is via REST APIs and language bindings. These APIs and bindings give you the ability to interact with SoftLayer object storage via command line or programmatically. As a result, you can create scripts to perform a file upload, download certain objects, and modify metadata related to the object. Additionally, the current support for PHP, Java, Ruby, and Python bindings give application developers the flexibility to support SoftLayer object storage in their applications.

While this method is flexible in terms of capabilities, it does assume the user has knowledge and experience writing scripts, programs, and applications. REST APIs and language bindings aren’t the best methods for IT organizations that want to integrate existing environment backup, archive, and disaster recovery solutions. These solutions typically require traditional storage mount points, which REST APIs and language bindings don’t provide.

Third-Party Applications
The second method is to use third-party applications that support SFTP. This method abstracts the use of REST APIs and gives users the ability to upload, download, and delete objects via a GUI. However, you won’t have the ability to modify metadata when using an SFTP client. Additionally, third-party applications have a 5GB upload limit placed on each object by SoftLayer and OpenStack Swift. If an object greater than 5GB needs to be uploaded, you have to follow the OpenStack method of creating large objects on object storage to assure successful and efficient object upload. Unless you’re comfortable with this methodology, it’s strongly recommended that you use either the REST APIs or storage gateway solutions to access files over 5GB.

SoftLayer Customer Portal
The third method to access SoftLayer object storage is to simply use the SoftLayer customer portal. By using the portal, you have the ability to add containers, add files to containers, delete files from containers, modify metadata, and enable CDN capabilities. As with the SFTP method of accessing the object store, you can upload an unlimited number of files as long as each file does not exceed 20MB in size. Also, there is no bulk upload option within the customer portal; users must select and upload on a per-file basis. While using the portal is simple, it does provide some limitations and is best for users only wanting to upload a few files that occupy 20MB or less.

Storage Gateways
The last method to access and utilize SoftLayer object storage is storage gateways. Unlike other methods, storage gateways are unique. They’re able to expose traditional storage protocols like iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, and SMB and translate the read/write/modify commands into REST API calls against the object storage service. As a result, these devices offer an easier path to consume SoftLayer object storage for businesses looking to integrate their on-premises environment with the cloud. Some storage gateways also have the ability to compress, deduplicate, and encrypt data in-flight and at-rest. Storage gateways work best with organizations looking to integrate existing applications requiring traditional storage access methods (like backup software) with object storage or to securely transfer and store data to cloud object storage.

Summary
While there are many methods to access SoftLayer object storage, it’s important that you select an option that best meets your requirements relating to data access, security, and integration. For example, if you’re writing an application that requires object storage, you would most likely choose to interact with object storage via REST APIs or use language bindings. Or, if you simply need to integrate existing applications in your environment to cloud object storage, storage gateway would be the best option. In all cases, make sure you can meet your requirements with the appropriate method.

Table 1 lists sample requirements and shows whether each option meets the requirements. Use it to help you with your decision making process:Table 1: Decision making tool

Click here for more information about SoftLayer’s object storage service and click here for FAQs on object storage.

Click here for information about SoftLayer’s REST-APIs and language bindings.

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

Grocery store chain comes to SoftLayer.
We are excited to have Giant Eagle moving to our infrastructure. So why are they moving away from building their data centers? Jeremy Gill, Giant Eagle’s senior director of technology infrastructure, said, “The firm's focus has shifted to infrastructure-as-a-service for its future computing needs as an answer to the geographic spread of its users. It chose IBM over other providers because it offered both virtual servers and bare-metal servers on which Giant Eagle could run some of its legacy applications.”

Giant Eagle plans to transition their secondary data center used for disaster recovery to SoftLayer over the next 12 months. Gill also noted that moving to the cloud will help to develop their current disaster recovery system. In doing so, they’ll be “adding additional resiliency.” In an article by InformationWeek said, “The disaster recovery system, instead of being asleep in storage, will be represented by a virtual machine, running at idle, but ready to receive data and be scaled out.” Gill further noted, “The goal is to get the recovery time objective down from one or several hours to 15 minutes or less (possibly even instant recovery).”

IBM Cloud leaves competitors in the dust.
The results of a recent independent study, Amazon.com and Microsoft are a step behind IBM’s cloud offering.

The independent research firm’s goal was to “measure the performance and relative cost of the cloud industry's biggest players. The objective of the study was two-fold: one, determine which of the cloud kings offered the most operations per second. Second, compare the relative cost for each operation performed. Not only did IBM's SoftLayer bare metal platform win the day -- it turns out it wasn't even close.”

So why is it a big deal? If you look at it based solely on performance, the study found IBM is far and above its competitors. The survey said, “For each dollar spent on IBM's SoftLayer bare metal cloud platform, its customers enjoy 4.63 billion operations.” It also highlighted, “That's a lot of bang for the buck, particularly compared to other cloud providers. Amazon.com's AWS customers get about a third fewer operations for each dollar spent, and Microsoft about a tenth.”

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

IBM grows Direct Link services.
IBM is speeding up hybrid cloud adoption by expanding Direct Link services with the help of Verizon and Equinix. An article from eWeek highlights the key points and the aspects of the new services. The new services include colocation capabilities, which will allow companies to “house their own infrastructure in a secure cabinet within an IBM Cloud data center while connecting directly into the IBM Cloud network from 13 global data center locations.”

Jack Beech, VP of business development at SoftLayer, says, "With help from providers such as Verizon, Equinix and Digital Realty, we're giving clients more options for connecting to our cloud platform. Users can connect directly into our Infrastructure as a Service from their global data centers or offices using Direct Link, benefiting from a faster, more reliable and more secure connection than is typical through the public Internet."

Read more about how the new services will increase the life of existing IT investments here.

So how did they build the game? The Cloud Data Services Developer Advocacy team used “the data and analytics power of Apache® Spark™. We set out to create a pattern-recognition engine that could browse a large collection of interactions to determine what would most likely be the winning move.”

With only two months to complete the application, they reached out to the IBM Design team for assistance in “how design thinking could produce very exciting results.”

Want to know what went into the architecture, player experience design, implementation with Node.js, and more? Get the details here.

What’s cooking, Watson?
Watson can do more than win Jeopardy. Turn to IBM Watson to help you plan the menu for your next meal.

Enter Chef Watson. The cognitive cooking app will assist you in creating new recipes in just a couple of clicks.